offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;

offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;

uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;

will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;

is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.”

We believe that euthanasia and assisted suicide are wrong because they involve the intentional killing of human beings, and further because if they become common practice, they pose a risk to those with disabilities or long-term illnesses, who may feel pressured to choose death.

In the past year, Bill C-384 has been making its way through the House of Commons.

3 thoughts on “Euthanasia and Bill C-384”

I’m not sure about the stance on euthanasia. I work as a community health worker and with palliative patients all the time. I don’t really believe in moral absolutes of right and wrong I believe that every situation deserves compassion. I certainly don’t believe euthanasia as an easy way out, but I feel if you are fully cognizant you should have the right to choose what path to choose. Who are we to say that someone should suffer though terrible pain because it clashes with a Christian belief system- that would be cruel, short sited and unkind. Imagine waking up everyday in severe pain, excruciating just to draw in a single breath. Unborn babies who don’t have a voice is one thing, thinking adults who are capable of thought and who deserve to die with dignity and without pain is another. Just a thought

I understand what you are saying. I see a big problem with the wording that is used around this whole euthanasia bill though. For example, you said that people “deserve to die with dignity”. I agree. However, the implication of the current discussion is that it is possible for a person to “die without dignity” which is patently false. Every human being is dignified regardless of his or her state of being or his or her state of pain. We are really failing as a society if a person can be made to feel undignified. If we are a society that tells people that they are in a state of indignity, then we are going to perpetuate the problem of suicide. It will certainly lead from a state of mind in which people think that they “deserve to die” into one in which people think that they “no longer deserve to live”.

This is absolutely true, and it can be seen in every Western country or state in which euthanasia has been legalized. There are instances in Oregon, for example, in which insurance companies have refused cancer treatments, but have offered to pay for euthanasia “treatment” instead. You can be sure that the same would happen in Canada, except that it would be your own government which would be making such “offers” instead.